


Five for Fighting

by disarm_d



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Body Image, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent Issues, M/M, Size Difference, other pairings mentioned - Freeform, small mention of past underage sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:33:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9422645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d/pseuds/disarm_d
Summary: Mitch would have gotten an extra two with the instigator minor there for sure.Mitch knows how to be nice to the bigger guys, and Matt knows how to say yes to the talent.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I owe [threeturn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn) such a massive gratitude for spending so much time helping me to fix up this story. She's so kind to help me in a fandom she's not a part of, but also SO SMART and SO HELPFUL. So thanks for being the full package, bb. 
> 
> For anyone who's not into hockey but wants to give this fic a try, this is [Mitch and Matt](http://68.media.tumblr.com/6d72444133d6ee328adb591fb1adfc47/tumblr_ojl7tnCBLQ1uiqfu7o1_500.jpg). That really just sums them up, but if you want to see more, here's my [Mitch tag](http://disarmd.tumblr.com/tagged/mitch-marner) and my [Matt tag](http://disarmd.tumblr.com/tagged/matt-martin).

Mitch’s dad hated how small he was, even more than the coaches did. Mitch was twelve and his team was losing, and his dad kept yelling at him to check, just fucking check that fucking guy. Mitch hadn’t, because that fucking guy didn’t have the puck, and Mitch had thought he could intercept the pass from the guy who did, but he couldn’t, and the other team had scored another goal. 

His dad had been mad in the car, driving back home. He was running through the game, like he always did, pointing out the ways that Mitch could have done better, talking again about how he should have hit that fucking guy. Mitch knew that even if he’d checked that fucking guy, they wouldn’t have won the game. Even if he’d intercepted the pass, which had the better move, they still wouldn't have won, because they were trailing six-two. Mitch had gotten one of the goals and an apple on the other.

He’d sat in the front seat and watched the black shapes beyond the lit highway. His dad had said, “You’re still playing like a kid. You need to play like a man,” and Mitch had said he knew, he was sorry, because they’d gone over this before. 

His dad had sighed, stretching out his fingers from where they were clamped around the steering wheel. “They’ll give you more minutes after you have your growth spurt,” he’d said. 

When they got home and his mom asked how the game was, Mitch said, “Should have hit this guy,” and then asked her if she could make him scrambled egg whites because he knew he needed lean proteins to grow. His dad sat across from him and watched him eat, gave him a little smile like he knew what Mitch was trying to do. 

\--

The Leafs were playing okay but they still kept losing. Everyone had a lot of ideas about how they could win. Mitch listened to the coaches and the trainers and his dad when they went for dinner and the older guys on the team and even the random people online despite everyone warning him against reading his own press. He tried to work on the things he could but sometimes the only thing that was really in his control was to make someone laugh in the dressing room. He sang out loud every time he knew the lyrics to a song. He wore stupid outfits with Auston. Morgan thought Mitch was the worst dancer in the world, so Mitch danced all the time. 

It seemed like Morgan was probably going to get the C one day, so Mitch went to lunch with him a lot, had him over to play video games. They got drunk one night and Morgan fell asleep after Mitch blew him, which was kind of like staying the night but also pretty different. He made a fuss the next morning, as if it mattered that Mitch was a rookie.

Mitch had said, “Dude, you’re not captain yet,” which apparently hadn’t been the right thing, because Morgan stormed off, so after that Mitch just focused on making him laugh with his stupid dancing.

\--

It’s not like any of them were afraid of Matt. Obviously they’d been playing with older guys their entire lives, and it wasn’t like Matt was even _that_ old or _that_ big or _that_ scary by reputation. Everyone else treated him kind of normal. It’s just that Mitch was the one who, when they had their first day off between games in Toronto, decided that they should go to karaoke, and then he asked Matt to do a duet with him and said that Matt should sing the girl’s part because he had the higher voice. Mitch caught guys giving him these looks like, _What do you think you’re doing, bud_? But what he thought he was doing was singing a pretty sick cover of Closer by the Chainsmokers. 

Mitch tried to pull up his sleeve enough to show his tattoo for the _bite that tattoo on your shoulder_ lyric, slapping at his arm, and laughing when Matt bent down to nip at him. 

Mitch slipped his fingers under the collar of Matt’s t-shirt when they were hugging after they finished the song, and touched the big bump of the vertebrae at the back of his neck. It’d been a little bit since Matt had gotten a haircut and Mitch felt the bristle as he rubbed over the bottom of Matt’s hairline. 

Mitch put his and Matt’s names back in the queue and went to the bar for another drink. When he returned, he could hear Morgan telling Matt that he didn’t have go along with Mitch’s stupid ideas, but Matt just laughed and said, “This isn’t my first time in the show. You always say yes to the talent.”

They closed the place down, and when they stepped out onto Yonge Street it was as quiet as Yonge ever got: still plenty of people out, but they could walk three abreast without getting dirty looks. It’d snowed a few days ago, and now all that was left of that were solid scars of ice lying thick on the sidewalk. Huge grains of salt sat on top of the slabs where the ice was too cold to melt. 

Mitch had forgotten his gloves, and the cold made his knuckles hurt. He pulled the cuffs of his sleeves over his hands and held the ends in his closed fists. He had a deep bruise across his thigh from when he’d been slashed earlier, and the cold awoke the throb. When they stopped at the street corner, waiting for the light to change, he kept walking until he was pressed right up against Matt’s back, and rested his forehead between Matt’s shoulders. Matt’s coat was cold against Mitch’s forehead, but the longer Mitch stood there, the more he could feel the heat from Matt’s body come through. 

\--

His dad always said to be nice to the older guys. Mitch grew, but it wasn’t as much as his dad had been hoping for, and his dad hated the idea that Mitch’s size might hold him back. He’d tell Mitch to be nice to the older guys, but he just meant to be nice to whoever was big, whoever would watch Mitch’s back and help make up for how small he was. 

There were lots of guys like that, because Mitch was pretty good at scoring, either by himself or by setting up whoever was around him to score, and he didn’t make a fuss when he got ground into the boards like some of the other kids who were good at scoring did. He’d just take it, and then usually one of the guys, one of the older, taller, bigger ones, would go after whoever had hit him and Mitch would go after the puck. 

That way there were no excuses. His dad really didn’t like it when Mitch made excuses. 

\--

Matt was kind of eager, which Mitch hadn’t anticipated. He wanted to hang out all the time. Like even when Mitch was tired and would rather have just hung out with no one at all. 

“This is a fucking stupid movie,” Mitch said. He just meant to throw the channel changer over to the other bed, but he chucked it too hard and it ended up hitting Matt in the chest. 

“Pick something else then,” Matt said, putting the channel changer on the table in between the two beds. 

They were on a road trip and they were playing Minnesota tomorrow. Their flight had landed an hour ago, at 2 am, and the smart play was getting the fuck to sleep, but Mitch had fallen asleep on the plane and now he was wired. He probably could have gotten back to sleep if the room was quiet and dark, but Matt wanted to watch TV first. They didn’t normally room together, and thank fuck for that. 

Last week, Matt had fought Gudbranson when they were losing two-nothing, which had helped a little, but they still lost in overtime. Then he fought Zadorov, but Colorado still beat them. They’d won a couple but they lost to the Sharks and the Coyotes and the Ducks. Everyone kept saying they were going to be good in a couple of years, but Mitch wanted to be good _now_. 

He rubbed his forehead. His shoulder and side and calf all ached. His head hurt too, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t from being checked. He wanted everyone to stop trying to fucking hit him all the time, because bruises hurt a lot worse when they were losing. 

He picked up the remote, threw it at Matt again. 

“You’re going to break it,” Matt said, ready this time, and batting it away before it could hit him.

When it was obvious Matt wasn’t going to do anything more than that, Mitch threw himself instead, barreling towards Matt’s bed. Matt was immovable when Mitch tried to roll him off the bed. He got his hands around Mitch’s wrists in no time at all, flipped them around, pinned Mitch down. 

When Mitch said, “Let go,” Matt did, right away. Mitch tried to tackle him again and Matt pinned him over and over. It was funny to play like this. If they were across from each other on the ice in different coloured jerseys, Matt could take Mitch down without breaking a sweat, but they were on a bed instead. They played for the same team. 

When Matt had him face down on the bed, his knees tight on either side of Mitch’s hips, hands locked around Mitch’s wrists, holding them to the mattress, Mitch closed his eyes. He could hear the sound of his eyelashes swishing against the synthetic fabric of the duvet. His shirt had ridden up, and he could feel Matt’s bare knees pressed to his bare sides, both of them just in their boxers. Mitch’s side was all bruised up from when he had been checked at a fucked up angle. If Matt tightened his thighs, dug his knee in on that side, it would really hurt. Somehow he hadn’t gotten Mitch’s bruise yet, not the entire time they’d been wrestling.

Matt let go of him, even though Mitch didn’t tell him to. He sat down beside Mitch. Mitch’s face was in the blankets, but he could still tell Matt was looking at him.

“You’re missing your stupid movie,” Mitch said, turning his head to the side. Matt touched his cheek, his hair. He shifted his position on the bed, and then he didn’t do anything else, so Mitch guessed he really was watching the TV. 

Mitch fell asleep until Matt turned off the TV, and then woke up confused by the quiet. He was cold from sleeping on top of the comforters, and he dragged himself back to his own bed, slid under the sheets. Somehow they felt even colder, because at least on Matt’s bed, there was the warmth of Matt pressed against his side. Mitch considered complaining, but he was already falling back to sleep. 

\--

Mitch liked touching people. This girl he’d dated told him about the love languages, and he didn’t even have to do the quiz to know that his was physical affection. She’d ribbed him that it was just that he was horny, which, with her, it kind of was. But he wanted to touch Davo all the time too, and Dylan once they finally started playing on the same team occasionally. And all the other guys on whatever team he was playing for, when they won and even when they lost. Some of the guys were prissy about it, which was fine because it was funny to rile a guy up just by wrapping your arm around him. Usually everyone was just kind of fine with it though. 

Matt really liked being touched. He let Mitch touch him however he liked and whenever he liked. It was nice, but not really all that different from most of the other guys, so Mitch wasn’t expecting it when Matt kissed him.

Before Matt kissed him, Mitch had his face in Matt’s neck, hand tucked under the hem of Matt’s wool sweater to slide his fingers through the hair on Matt’s lower belly. Mitch realized it must have seemed like he’d been coming on to Matt. Mitch would have gotten an extra two with the instigator minor there for sure. And then he opened his mouth for Matt’s tongue, opened the fly of Matt’s jeans, and sucked his dick.

Mitch didn’t care about the taste, but he didn’t like swallowing because it made his stomach feel weird afterward. Like whatever feeling was the complete opposite of eating too much sugar. But Matt was still wearing all of his clothes so when he came, Mitch kept his mouth around Matt’s cock and swallowed. 

They were in Matt’s hotel room, and his roommate would probably be back soon, plus Mitch was fucking starving, because the whole point was that they were supposed to be meeting to go down for dinner together, so he left Matt to tuck himself back in and went to gargle in the ensuite. The bruise on his side had faded into a swamp green. It didn’t hurt any more, but he hated how long his body held on to hits. He wished guys would stop slamming him around. It would be easier to be built like Matt, who could take a guy down without a single thing to show for it after. But it was fine. Mitch just needed to make it through his rookie year, he reminded himself for the upteenth time.

“Do you...want something?” Matt asked when Mitch came back to the main part of the room. 

“Steak,” Mitch said immediately, because he’d been thinking about it, “with mushrooms.” 

Matt blinked.

“Dude, come on,” Mitch said, kicking at his shin. “We’d have to do that like three hundred more times before it counted as protein. I need real food.” Every part of his diet plan was geared towards getting him more protein, because the trainers said he was doing okay but he just really needed to try to bulk up a little more, even ten pounds to start with. He grabbed Matt’s shoes off the floor and lobbed them over one at a time.

\--

“Did you ever fuck around with guys on your other teams?” Mitch asked Auston while he was driving them to practice in the morning. It’d been overcast, but now the clouds were thinning and it was like watching the sun rise even though it was the middle of the morning. Mitch wished he could keep going until they hit the 400, which would be a little busy but not like cottage country traffic busy. Then they could just _drive_. All the start and stop of the QEW congestion was giving him a heavy foot, and he wanted to gun it. 

“Um, no,” Auston said, after a weird hesitation. Mitch glanced over at him. He had this uncomfortable, attentive look on his face. “Have you?” Auston asked after another pause.

Oh, Auston thought it was going to be some big coming out thing, Mitch realized. He laughed without meaning to. Auston was such a dipshit sometimes. Like his body got tall instead of smart.

He was a big guy, even though he didn’t look it right now, curled up in Mitch’s passenger seat in tight jeans with ripped knees. Mitch reached over to pat Auston’s thigh, laughing again. Auston probably never worried that much about finding someone to look out for him on the ice. Mitch’s dad would have loved to have a son who was built like Auston.

\--

Matt fucked him too carefully, which made it worse. Mitch didn’t like getting fucked. He didn’t _dis_ like it, but he had to concentrate really hard if he was going to come when someone was inside of him, and he didn’t like having to put that much work into his own orgasm. Like might as well just jerk off alone if he was going to have to concentrate with complete and absolute focus. Matt fucked like he was trying not to hurt Mitch, which made it feel like it was going to drag on indefinitely, no build, nothing but the boring steady rhythm. Mitch used to fuck girls like this when he first lost his virginity and was terrified of doing something wrong; he knew it didn’t feel that good for Matt either. 

“Fuck me properly,” Mitch said, shoving back onto Matt’s dick. It hurt and he winced before he gritted his teeth and did it again. His knee ached from when he’d wiped out hard after being checked from behind during their last game. It ached like a bruise though, not like something was torn inside. Mitch was still fine to get fucked on all fours like this. 

Matt’s hands were careful around Mitch’s hips. He stopped moving entirely, and gritted out, “Fuck, do you even want it?” 

Mitch chanted, “Do it, do it, do it,” dropping his head.

Matt picked up the pace slowly, but finally he got there, giving it to Mitch properly so the uncomfortable parts didn’t matter because it finally felt like _fucking_.

“Can you come?” Matt said and made like he was going to grab at Mitch’s cock. 

“No,” Mitch said, slapping his hand away. “Suck me off after.”

He arched his back, let Matt get in a little deeper. 

“I’m going to do you next time. Fuck, okay. You’ll let me?” But his voice forgot to turn it into a question, and he sounded, like. Different than he was used to sounding. He sounded like the kind of guy that Matt would probably let himself get fucked by, even though no one would think he looked it. 

Matt made a lot of noise when he came. He rubbed his fingers over Mitch’s hole after, when he was sucking him off, but Mitch said, “No, focus,” and Matt wrapped his hand around the base of Mitch’s cock instead.

\--

Mitch saw Dylan and Connor over the holidays. He was still living super close to home, so his parents didn’t care so much about him spending the night at Dylan’s house, even though his dad never thought that playing street hockey was a good idea in case Mitch got hurt. Mitch said they didn’t play it any more, which was sort of true, because they got too much attention on the street when it was all of them out there, but he and Davo and Dylan still fucked around with sticks in Dylan’s parents’ garage. 

When they were tired they went to the basement, where Dylan pulled the bed out of the couch and they lay down to watch Elf, just like every year. Connor let Mitch pull him to his chest, and Dylan, too, after a little more fuss, until Mitch had an arm around each of them. Their hands overlapped on his stomach. He was the smallest, but like this it felt like he was holding both of them. Dylan kept trying to give him raspberries, but it didn’t work through the cotton of his shirt. 

“I can hear your stomach digesting,” Connor said. 

“Shh,” Mitch said, sliding his hand up from Connor’s shoulder to stroke his hair. 

“I can hear it, too,” Dylan said. “Gurgle. Gurgle.”

Mitch had sucked Connor off once, that night Connor was bitching about how being Connor McDavid made it harder to get laid, as if _that_ made any kind of sense at all, and he’d jerked off Dylan like one and a half times. The half time would have led to a blowjob except they were at Worlds and someone had knocked on their door. Mitch didn’t think they had ever hooked up with each other. They didn’t have to, probably, which was nice. Like, _friendship_. 

He didn’t know what things were like between them and the guys on their teams. 

\--

They were tied 1-1 in the Winter Classic when Matt fought Ott, right in front of the Red Wing’s bench. He pushed Ott almost into the laps of his teammates and then set him down on the ice until the refs dragged Matt away. He kept yelling at Ott, even when they were both in the box. 

“Didn’t like that hit on Matthews,” Zach said, approvingly. 

“Yeah,” Mitch said.

Each team got three more in the back of the net after that, and then Auston won it for them in overtime. 

“Say you liked the fight,” Mitch said to Auston after the game as they were skated over to the next interview station. “He’ll like that.”

“I did like the fight,” Auston said. He laughed, but he also gave Mitch a second look. Mitch quickly rewound what he had just said, trying to parse out if he’d seemed too...whatever. Whatever it was that he did that made the captain of his OHL team tell him to stop worrying so much about being friends with everyone, and his coach in juniors tell him he needed to spend more time looking out for himself and less time focusing on everyone else. 

But he and Auston were already in front of another camera, so Mitch didn’t have time to worry that he’d given too much away.

\--

They played Montreal on the second half of a back to back, after flying home from New Jersey the night before. Matt fought McCarron that night. He went home with Mitch, after. 

Mitch undressed him. He’d seen Matt in the locker room, but still he was surprised when he got Matt naked to see that Matt’s skin was mostly unblemished. 

“He didn’t hurt you at all,” Mitch said, smoothing his hands down Matt’s chest. He could feel the little bumps of Matt’s nipples with his palms. Mitch was probably more bruised up than Matt at that time, from a couple of hard hits that he hadn’t really felt until he was back trying to catch his breath on the bench. 

“It’s mostly just for show,” Matt said, lying down on Mitch’s bed. “You know that.”

“Looks real,” Mitch said and crawled up after him. 

“So what do you want?” Matt asked. Mitch was still clothed, and Matt helped pull his t-shirt over his head. “Got to keep our star happy.”

Mitch had gotten primary assists on all three of the goals they’d scored that night, which was sort of like a hat trick except that no one gave out hat tricks just for assists. 

He knelt over Matt, fed him his cock. It wasn’t a great position given how much his whole body ached, but it looked really good. Matt looked so -- calm, maybe. His jaw working as Mitch pushed in deeper. He had his hands on Mitch’s hips, helping to hold him up, so Mitch dropped his own hand, worked the base of his cock, fucking his hand, fucking Matt’s mouth. 

He came and Matt couldn’t swallow until he was sitting up more, so there was this long moment when Mitch was on top of him, too come-dumb to pull away, and Matt had a mouth full of come. Even when he got his coordination back, Mitch took a little longer to move away than he should have, but Matt didn’t seem to care. He was hard when Mitch crawled down to return the favour. 

\--

“Who do you say when they ask who your best friend on the team is?” Mitch asked when he was facetiming with Connor. Connor was shirtless in a hotel room bed. His hair looked exceptionally stupid. 

“You’re not on my team,” Connor said. “You can’t be jealous.” 

Mitch snorted. 

“I just say, whoever. List off a bunch of people.”

“Right,” Mitch said, because he’d already had a sense that was the right answer. 

“Why?”

“I just think it’s weird. Like, it’s your team. It’s not your friends.” 

“You’re not friends with the guys on your team?” Connor asked. He looked so close to falling asleep. He had an icepack resting on his collarbone even though the official word was supposed to be that it never hurt him any more. 

“I’m friends with everyone,” Mitch said. “It’s just different. Because you need them. Like you can’t _not_ be friends. It’s like your family. You don’t have a choice.”

“Can’t not be friends with me either, Marns,” Connor said, his voice almost inaudibly soft. 

“Take off the ice before you fall asleep, dummy,” Mitch said. “Goodnight.”

Connor made a grumbling sound, sighed and said, “Night,” the screen going too dark and then too light as Connor moved in his bed. 

Maybe it was because he couldn’t see Davo’s face anymore, but Mitch blurted out, “Would you say you were friends with Lucic?” 

Connor didn’t answer, and then the notification came up that the call had ended, so he probably hadn’t heard Mitch, which was just as well. If Mitch had to miss most of his rookie season because someone had broken his collarbone, he probably would have… well, the point was to make sure that didn’t happen in the first place. He didn’t know what he’d say if Connor asked him a similar question. He didn’t know what Connor had thought when they traded for Lucic, but it had been pretty obvious what he was there for. 

\--

The Leafs had their break after that, and he and Matt and Carrick went to the beach, and that was fun, and then they came back. 

Matt had gotten sunburnt and he was getting aloe all over his shirt, trying to rub it on his neck as everyone dressed to play Montreal. Mitch took the bottle for him, held Matt’s shirt away, dabbed it on his skin. 

“Hey, kid, if I get in a fight will you suck my dick too?” Polák asked.

Mitch knew how he looked, hanging over Matt. He’d do the same thing for Polák or any guy on the team, and he thought they all knew that, but they were still going to chirp him about it. Mitch laughed, and didn’t stop rubbing in the aloe. 

Matt didn’t respond, which was the important thing. It didn’t matter if other guys joked about Mitch getting on his knees, and it didn’t even matter that he actually did; what was important was that none of it fucked up their locker room dynamic. Mitch gave a quick glance around the room. Morgan was was staring at Mitch, giving him this _look_. Mitch hated that look. It was usually the look that people gave him before they asked if he actually thought he could handle himself. Like when he was young, and good enough to play with the bigger kids, but still so much smaller. He used to get that look a lot: appraising, when someone was worried about him and they thought they could tell if he had what it took just by looking at him. Morgan tried to meet Mitch’s eye, but Mitch looked away. 

“It’d have to be a pretty good fight,” Mitch said after pretending to consider it for a minute. “Or like, who are we talking about here? Would you go after Chára?”

Morgan got up, spread his hand to show all five fingers, and then slapped Mitch on the top of the head.

“Five for instigating,” he said, before going back to his own stall. 

“Whump, whump, dad’s mad,” Brown said. 

“Can you fight Morgan?” Mitch asked Polák, as he passed the aloe back to Matt.

That was the end of that, but after he got back from showering, Mitch saw Morgan whispering with Nazem. They stopped when they saw Mitch staring.

\--

Mitch realized afterward that he shouldn’t have brought up Chára since Matt actually had fought him in October. That was like a little… close. But it was too late by the time he remembered. 

\--

“You doing okay with Matt?” Nazem asked the next day when they were leaving the practice rink. 

“Yeah,” Mitch said, but with a question mark because he didn’t know what Naz was talking about. “I don’t usually play at the same time as him.” It’s not like they had to worry about on-ice chemistry. 

“No, I know. I mean, like, the two of you,” Nazem said. 

“Um, _yeah_ ,” Mitch said.

“I heard what Roman was saying the other day,” Nazem said, which meant Morgan had pointed it out to him. That’s what those bitches had been whispering about. “I just wanted to see if you were, like, okay with everything.”

“I don’t care about giving a _blowjob_ ,” Mitch scoffed. 

He’d given a bj for the first time when he was fourteen, to that guy, when they were on a road trip, Mitch could remember his name mostly but right now it had slipped away. He hadn’t given a shit then, and he definitely didn’t care now. That guy had been older, and he hadn’t returned the favor in a pointed way, not like Matt, who just hadn’t really been given the opportunity that first time. 

“That wasn’t really…” Nazem started.

“Look, next time just ask Morgan why he can’t talk to me about this himself,” Mitch said, which, okay, was kind of mean, because Morgan had been really clear the next morning that he’d regretted the whole thing and did not want Mitch telling anyone, but whatever. It was also mean of Mo to sic Nazem on him. 

Nazem looked skyward, rubbing between his eyebrows. 

“It’s okay,” Mitch said, throwing his arm around Nazem. “It’s just rookie stuff.”

“It was not like this when I was a rookie,” Nazem said. 

Mitch snorted. “Sure.”

Although it probably hadn’t really been like that for Naz, who was supposed to be a goal scorer but had been trained into being a defensive forward instead. The way he played, it was always clear he could handle himself on the ice.

\--

“If you want to talk, we can just talk,” Mitch said, cornering Morgan in the parking lot after a game. He’d meant to talk with Mo for a while now, but he kept getting distracted. They’d won that night, and everyone would have liked to go out, but they were playing yet another back to back. 

“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Morgan said. 

“Just chill out,” Mitch said. He kicked at Morgan’s tire, which actually kind of hurt his foot. Tires were pumped up really full, it turned out. 

“I’m trying to look out for him, too,” Morgan said. “You know if something goes wrong with the two of you doing whatever the hell you’re doing, he’s a lot easier to replace than you are. It’s not the same for him, and I know you never want to talk about anything, but at the very least you should, just, like. Acknowledge that.”

 _You wouldn’t have been easy to replace_ Mitch wanted to say, but he knew that hadn’t been the point Morgan was trying to make -- not now or then. Morgan pretended he was all about, like, no one taking advantage, or something stupid, as if it actually mattered to anyone at all how old Mitch was. It was just one of those things that sounded good, or at least sounded better than not wanting repeats with the teammate who got a little sloppy when he was drunk. 

Mitch just said, “Acknowledged, sir, assistant captain Mo-Mo the nosy.”

Morgan made a face. He leaned against the driver’s side door, looking all attentive and concerned. He’d make a good captain some day. Mitch walked into him, thudding their bodies together, which made Morgan groan out, _Uhff_ , and then Mitch wrapping one of his arms around Morgan’s shoulders in a kind of hug. 

Morgan held still, like he was waiting to see what Mitch would do next. It kind of seemed like he wanted to be kissed, which was the thing that Mitch still didn’t get at all. Morgan had made all these excuses about why he couldn’t, so obviously he didn’t actually want Mitch, but it was hard to tell that from the open line of his body. 

“Don’t worry about what I do with Matt,” Mitch said and then pulled away. He smiled at Morgan, took a step backward, then another one. 

“You didn’t like it with me anyway,” he said as he walked backwards, just before they were far enough apart that he’d have to raise his voice, and then he turned around and walked away properly. 

And then, when he was back in his own car, waiting for the air to turn hot enough to clear the frost from his window, he texted Matt. 

\--

Mitch went over to Matt’s house. They ordered take away and then went to Matt’s bedroom while they waited for the delivery to arrive. Mitch slapped Matt’s ass, gave it a squeeze just to see what Matt would do, and then somewhere between a joke and the food arriving, he ended up fucking Matt’s ass. 

“Do you like this?” Matt asked, because getting fucked really didn’t make him any less needy.

“Yeah, you’re really hot,” Mitch said absently. He tried to remember what brand of condom he was using, because it seemed like it had some weird lube on it. Made his dick feel numb. “Feels good.” 

He meant to keep an eye on the clock so he’d know how long it was until the food was due to come, but the time they’d placed the order kept slipping right out of his head. The numbers on the clock didn’t make any sense at all. He couldn’t even figure out how long they’d been having sex for. 

He thought they should probably finish quickly, just in case, so he started paying more attention. Matt liked it when Mitch didn’t go too deep. He really liked Mitch’s hand around his cock. He came, loudly, which distracted the numb out of Mitch’s dick. Mitch felt supercharged after that, fucked Matt hard and maybe deeper than Matt would have liked, but it was just a handful of minutes before Mitch came. He put his fingers back in Matt’s ass afterward. They’d used a condom, so he was only wet with lube, but he was -- open. He twisted around for a kiss and whined when Mitch sucked on his tongue. 

They were still naked when the doorbell rang. The food, when they finally started eating, tasted incredible. 

Matt was wearing sweatpants with no underwear. He looked good, and eventually he noticed the way Mitch was staring at him. 

“We can do it another way next time,” Matt said. “If you want.”

“We’ve already done it every way.”

“I meant, like. Before,” Matt said. “Sometimes I can’t tell if -- do you _like_ fucking?”

“Everyone likes fucking,” Mitch said. 

\--

Dylan must have just gotten back from practice because his hair was still wet on the screen as he waved at the camera. 

“Going good?” Mitch asked. It was the first time he had talked to Dylan since he had lost World Juniors. 

Dylan gave him a look, like, _Ask that again and I’m hanging up_ , so Mitch didn’t, but, after an appropriate amount of not-hockey chatting, he did ask, “Do you ever think about, like. Like what you would do to get back on with the Coyotes?”

Dylan’s face tried to do three things at the same time. 

“I haven’t thought about it,” he finally said. 

“Okay, but like --”

“I mean,” Dylan said. “I haven’t thought about it. I don’t want to know.”

“Sorry,” Mitch said. “That was a dick thing to ask.” 

Mitch wished intensely that they were in the same room instead of just looking at each other over screens. He could imagine how Dylan’s back would feel under his hand, the way his t-shirts always seemed so thin against the notches up his spine. He wanted to rest his cheek against Dylan’s hair so that Dylan could tell how much Mitch wanted him to feel better. 

“I’d do anything, Marns,” Dylan said. “You know that.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “I know.”

\--

Matt scored a goal, and he was more visibly excited than Auston had been after he scored four in his first game. 

They went out, and drank beer instead of shots because it was the middle of the season. They danced with girls at the club and then Mitch went home with Matt. Mitch would have thought Matt would have wanted, well, anything other than what he actually wanted, which was to suck Mitch off so slow and sloppy and wet that Mitch was sweating by the time Matt finally let him come.

He asked for Mitch’s fingers while Mitch was sucking him off, and Mitch wondered if he should try to get it up again so he could fuck Matt properly. But Matt had already taken so long with that blowjob, and it was late, so Mitch just squeezed three fingers into Matt’s ass and tried to fit Matt’s cock down his throat. 

\--

Mitch had Morgan over to play Call of Duty, because Morgan had been looking a little hangdog after their chat in the parking lot, and then he fucked up his knee and just started looking mopey as fuck. 

“I guess I should have gone to your place,” Mitch said once Morgan was already settled on his couch. “You need ice or something?”

“I can _walk_ ,” Morgan said. “God.”

“I’ll give you a piggyback home,” Mitch said. 

“Perfect, just the escalation this needed. Both of us out on IR.”

“You’re day by day,” Mitch said, frowning.

“Probably wouldn’t be after getting a piggyback from you,” Morgan said. 

He held still when Mitch put his hand on his knee, just a careful weight, because Mitch didn’t want to hurt him. Mitch bumped their shoulders together, gave the side of Morgan’s head a little nuzzle. 

“You don’t always have to do that,” Morgan said when Mitch moved away. “We all already like you.”

Morgan liked to pretend that he was so much older and wiser, but he only had a few years on Mitch. When he came, his voice got high like a girl’s. He could try to older brother Mitch into the grave, but Mitch was always going to know that about him. 

Mitch tried to make his face look attentive, and gave Morgan a deep nod.

“I don’t know what’s in your head sometimes,” Morgan said. 

“Not too much, really,” Mitch said. “So are we going to play this fucking game or what?”

When Morgan left, after declining Mitch’s offer to carry him down to his car, Mitch said, “Be careful.”

“You, too, bud,” Morgan said. 

“I’m the paradigm of care,” Mitch said.

Morgan didn’t seem like he believed him, but he stopped giving Mitch weird looks in the dressing room after that.

\--

Mitch made sure to hug Morgan in front of Naz, who rolled his eyes and batted away Mitch’s hands when he tried to hug Nazem next, but also looked really happy that there was nothing else to talk about. Because of course he did. Everyone in the team needed to get along. That was rule number one. 

\--

It seemed like people were hitting him a little less than before, but when they did hit, they made it count. Mitch had taken a high stick during their last game, and his lip kept reopening. He held a bag of ice to his face, even though the numb of the cold hurt in a way he hated worse than the initial burn. Matt had checked the guy later, nothing he’d even been called for, but the guy hadn’t come back after he’d staggered off the ice and down the tunnel. 

Matt had followed him home, clucked about his lip, leaning in to try to get a closer look.

“Don’t,” Mitch had said, pushing him away. “You’re going to make it bleed again.”

“What do you want me to do?” Matt had said.

“Just, fucking, I don’t know. Something that will actually help.”

So Matt had put a tray of ice cubes into a sandwich bag, gave it to Mitch, and settled down on the floor in front of him. He was big, so when he was up on his knees, his hands on Mitch’s thighs, they were still almost eye to eye. 

Mitch looked at him, but the ache of the ice made him want to bite into something. He shoved at Matt’s shoulder. 

Matt sat back on his heels, looked up at Mitch. He rubbed Mitch’s knees, slid his hands up Mitch’s thighs, and start working on his fly. Mitch imagined if he could get the guy who’d sticked him on his knees like that. The guy had hurt Mitch and then Matt hurt him, and now Matt was going for Mitch’s cock. Mitch realized for the first time that this wasn’t even about getting through his rookie year. It was always going to be like this: guys going after him, Mitch needing someone else to finish what they started. Trying not to piss off the other guys in the locker room. The suffocating weight of trying to keep a whole team happy. 

“Stop,” Mitch said, before Matt could pull his cock out. “Just. Stop fucking touching me.”

Matt pulled back like Mitch had kicked him in the face.

“I’m only touching you because you want me to.”

Mitch stood. Matt was still on his knees. Mitch walked to his bedroom. Walked back again. Matt was standing again. It felt like if they fought right now, Mitch would win. That wasn’t something he had ever felt before. 

He was mad at Matt, mad at the guy, mad at the trainers who had said with grim resignation that they probably weren’t going to be able to get his weight up again until the off season and now he just needed to focus on maintenance. He was still holding the bag of ice. He pulled it away, touched his lip, which felt wet. It might have been blood or it might have been condensation from the ice. He wiped his finger off on the inside of his sleeve without checking. 

“Thanks for hitting that guy,” Mitch said. “I should have said that before.”

“It’s my fucking job,” Matt said. 

“Still.”

“Still,” Matt echoed. “I can’t read your mind, kid.”

Mitch nodded. He moved the ice, mostly melted now, around in the bag until there was a bigger piece at the corner, and pressed it to his mouth. He could feel the throb of it from his lip down his wrist. Bodies were weird. 

“I’m sorry that guy fucked up your face,” Matt said.

“He wouldn’t have done it if you were on the ice,” Mitch said. 

“I fucking hope not.”

Matt would have fought the guy if the hit hadn’t taken him down, Mitch knew. He would have fought anyone, which was the _point_ , except right now it was obvious he would never fight Mitch. 

Mitch put the bag of ice on the coffee table, unzipped his hoodie and threw it down onto the floor. He knew Matt’s shoulder was was bugging him, because he kept rubbing at it. 

“Come to my room and I’ll give you a massage,” Mitch said. He caught Matt around the waist and marched him down the hallway. Matt’s hands covered Mitch’s on his stomach. Mitch gave him a push toward the bed when they got into the bedroom. He took off his own jeans, jutting his chin until Matt did the same.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Matt asked, giving his shoulder a roll like he was checking to see if it still hurt. From the way he grimaced, Mitch guessed it still did. 

“Yeah, I’m a professional massage therapist,” Mitch said. “Want to see my licence?”

“I can’t even believe they licenced you to drive,” Matt grumbled, but he was already pulling off his shirt and flopping face first onto the bed. 

It was difficult to tell if there was one specific knot giving Matt trouble, because his whole back was just _hard_. He looked kind of built normally, but nothing showy. Like this, it seemed as though he was made up of a bunch of rocks shoved into a bloodwarm skin sack. Mitch rubbed his neck, his shoulders, used his knuckles to trace up and down Matt’s spine. 

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Mitch said, letting his fingers wander over the span of Matt’s shoulder blades.

“I never thought you did,” Matt said. His face was smushed into the bed, his voice _gruff_. 

Mitch touched him with just the tips of his fingers, as light as he could make it, and Matt shivered. 

They didn’t have any massage oil, just lube, like for asses, and it seemed like it would be weird to use that. Mitch’s hands caught a little on Matt’s bare skin as he stroked up and down, but he liked the way that felt. It was different than sex, where there was the latex of the condom and the weird chemical smell of lube. This was just Mitch’s hands and Matt’s naked back, and Mitch could touch Matt any way he wanted. He dropped down to lick at the nape of Matt’s neck. Matt stayed still. His body was soft on the mattress, even while it was hard under Mitch’s hands. At the same time, he felt like two opposite things. Somehow they were both true. 

The friction was probably too much, and by the time Mitch was done, Matt’s skin was so, so hot to the touch, like it was lit up from within. 

Mitch scooted down until their bodies were lined up as he carefully lay down on top of Matt. “Can you breathe if I do this?” he asked. 

Matt made a sound in the back of his throat that wasn’t a word. Mitch turned his head and rested his cheek in between Matt’s shoulder blades, keeping the bad side of his lip away from Matt’s skin. He could feel every breath Matt took. It was like floating on the ocean, like being held by the tide. 

\--

Mitch went for dinner with his parents. His dad thought he was playing good, but not Auston Matthews good. No kidding. He thought Mitch needed to get stronger, and Mitch said that he’d already been talking with the trainers about doing more conditioning in the off season. 

His dad liked Matt.

“Maybe he could teach you a thing or two,” his dad said. He’d never admit it, but Mitch knew a part of him still genuinely believed that one day Mitch was going to have his growth spurt. “Show you a few moves.”

Coach would have Mitch’s left ball if he ever tried to fight, but Mitch wasn’t going to have that argument with his dad again. He laughed and said, “Yeah, I’ll ask him some time.”

**Author's Note:**

> From The Very Secret Beta Notes of [Threeturn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn): _KILL MITCH'S DAD_
> 
> I'm over [here on tumblr](http://disarmd.tumblr.com).


End file.
